Heading into 2025, the U.S. girls’s nationwide discipline hockey workforce shall be seeking to win its manner again into the FIH Professional League after having been relegated within the final cycle.
The workforce seeking to make it again goes to provide us a have a look at the sort of workforce more likely to type within the runup to the 2028 Olympics. Will it’s a technical facet, a fast facet, or a bunch of gamers with various skills?
Our first have a look at the way forward for the U.S. workforce got here out in the present day in a roster for a tour of New Zealand, one which can embody a handful of video games and two internationals in opposition to the Black Sticks Ladies.
For me, probably the most attention-grabbing identify on the U.S. touring roster is Makenna Webster, who’s at present on the roster of the Ohio State girls’s ice hockey workforce. She is a dynamic athlete who was one of many causes the Buckeyes have been such a enjoyable discipline hockey workforce to observe final fall.
The tour of New Zealand takes place within the coronary heart of the ice hockey season. The times of the 2 official discipline hockey fixtures at New Zealand, Jan. 17 and 18, coincide with Ohio State’s sequence at Minnesota-Duluth. It may show to be a essential sequence within the 2024-25 season within the runup to the postseason. Ohio State and Duluth are fourth and second within the WCHA desk, inside three factors of one another in pursuit of Wisconsin. All three are within the prime 4 of the present U.S. School Hockey On-line girls’s ballot.
I don’t assume the U.S. selectors would have taken Webster if she weren’t going to suit into the plans of the sphere hockey workforce in upcoming tournaments.
You might say the identical for gamers resembling Jans Croon, Lucy Adams, Sanne Carls, and Katie Dixon. However I feel the gamers to observe, espcially throughout the entrance line, are Phia Gladieux and Ryleigh Heck, who’re two confirmed dynamic scorers.
I additionally assume one participant who can do quite a lot of good for her standing inside the U.S. program is Northwestern goalkeeper Annabel Skubicz. She was excellent in her most up-to-date outings in NCAA Division I, and I feel she shall be given each probability of constructing the roster for the FIH Nations’ Cup Event in Chile.
I feel one other participant to maintain your eye on is Cassie Sumfest, who has come off a yr’s rehabilitation from knee surgical procedure to make this 22-woman roster. Relying on what occurs in New Zealand in January,
I feel it will likely be very attention-grabbing to see what sort of workforce kinds for the Nations’ Cup out of the touring workforce and the ten gamers talked about on in the present day’s USA Subject Hockey information launch who have been “strategically not thought of” for the tour.
